It’s a disorder that preys on a person’s emotions, subjecting them to intense highs and lows, and influences how they think and feel about themselves and the people around them.

But BPD isn’t just dangerous — it’s widespread as well. The NIMH estimates that “about 1.6 percent of adults in the United States have BPD in a given year.” (They go on to qualify that the disorder “is often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed.”)

So, people struggling with borderline personality disorder need to know that they are not alone.

In an emotional 2016 Salon article, writer Sarah Haufrect described what it was like to live with her mother, who suffered from BPD and eventually committed suicide. Haufrect quoted an expert from L.A. County Psychological Association, who stated that, “Those with BPD have a distinctively polarized view of relationships, idealizing themselves and others, but one mistake, and the person is totally devalued.”

She described living with a person with BPD “like living with Mount Vesuvius always on the verge of erupting.”

As I mentioned, one of the problems with BPD is that it is often misdiagnosed. People with Borderline Personality Disorder rationalize their mood swings and emotional turmoil, not realizing that it’s part of a larger disorder. And the people close to those with BPD get angry or distance themselves, because they can’t understand what’s inspiring such extreme behavior.

This is why it is so vital for people to talk about what it actually looks and feels like when a person is afflicted with borderline personality disorder.

“It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative —whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.” — The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“This crack in your façade can be the first glimpse you have had to your real self. Ironically, your newly experienced vulnerability — the feeling that you are now exposed for all the world to see, that are your weaknesses are now visible — is the very thing that can save you.” — Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality